An Amtrak passenger train derailed around 4 PM yesterday near Joplin, Montana. Of the roughly 150 people on the train, three were killed and an unknown number were injured. Joplin is in northcentral Montana, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There are a couple small critical access hospitals in the region, but any passenger seriously injured will be transported to a “big” hospital. The closest big hospital is 100 miles away in Great Falls. The next-closest big hospital is in Helena, another 90 miles down the road.
Unfortunately for any of the passengers on that train, the Helena hospital has already implemented crisis standards of care, because their critical care units and their morgue are completely full. The Great Falls hospital just asked for twenty National Guard troops to assist them due to their load of COVID patients. As of last report, Billings and Bozeman hospitals were planning on implementing surge and/or crisis care plans.
Montana is a beautiful part of the world, and normally I’d recommend that anyone interested in seeing a beautiful place visit there. But, when your case curve looks like this, any human activity, from recreation to just passing through, is far more dangerous than usual if you’re unlucky enough to get injured.
(Side note about Montana: Jon Tester could be as big a drama queen as Sinema or Manchin, but he avoids that temptation and generally has a clear-eyed view of how DC works.)
Honus
Kristi Noem could send some National Guard troops to help out if a private donor hadn’t already sent hers to guard the Mexican border.
Capri
I’ve always been a Tester fan. He manages to be a blue senator in a very red state.
Baud
@Capri:
Agreed.
Freemark
@Capri: Tester isn’t a ‘perfect’ Democrat by any means, but he always seems like a pretty decent human being. Which puts him way ahead of our two main Democrat pains in the buttocks and every Republican currently serving.
SFAW
@Capri:
But why isn’t he doing more to get Republicans to work with the Dems??
Q, E, and checkmate, libtard!!
ETA: In case it wasn’t obvious. I agree with you (and Freemark).
matryoshka
I guess the Republicans finally got those death panels they were shrieking about not so many years ago.
Ten Bears
Having some experience – Alberton ~25 yrs ago – I’m willing to bet the track-bed failed, the result of years of neglect. But that can’t be, the infrastructure is just fine, needs no investment.
OTOH, the wind can really blow through there …
SFAW
@Ten Bears:
The Partei of Traitors is OK with spending money on roads and railroads, just not on the other things that any rational person living in the 21st Century thinks are part of the infrastructure. In other words, Cleek’s Law applied to infrastructure.
MomSense
Meghan McCain is on Meet the Press this morning. Did you know her father was maverick Senator John McCain?
My niece lives in Montana on a big cattle ranch. Hopefully she is isolated because she is not vaccinated. I don’t know how she fell under the spell of Ben fucking Shapiro’s lightning fast gibberish but here we are.
OzarkHillbilly
Asserts facts not in evidence. Here in Misery they do their damndest to avoid investing in anything other than lining the pockets of their benefactors.
GSV Sleeper Service
I grew up in southeastern Montana, and Custer County has just been slammed for the past week, 20-30 new cases/day in a population of 10k. I knew it was going to be a disaster when the school board talked about wanting to have a ‘pre-pandemic’ mindset.
Nicole
I agree with you about how beautiful Montana is, and I also agree that no way I’d willingly travel to one of those gorgeous but very red states right now. No amount of excellent health insurance is going to do any good with an overflowing hospital.
Baud
I have never been to Montana. Hope to go someday.
cmorenc
@Ten Bears:
Your prediction of trak-bed failure sounds plausible, but have Amtrak/investigators given any indication yet of their assessment of likely cause of the derailment?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Hospitals in crisis care mode is not something I’d think about if I got on a train. After all, I wasn’t going to that state, just passing through. Bad mistake.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: The only time I’ve been to (well, through) Montana was on an Amtrak trip from Chicago to the West Coast, which took an eight=hour detour north when the track we were suppsed to be on was under repair. My thoughts are very much with the current passengers.
Another Scott
@Ten Bears: That is my supposition as well. It’s too far from anything to be assumed to be deliberate sabotage; the weather was clear; the section of track was straight; it wasn’t blazing hot (which can cause the rails to buckle).
But we’ll have to wait for the investigations by the experts.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
I’ll never understand health care workers who refuse to be vaccinated. Hochul wants to protect patients with compromised immune systems… she’s given providers more than enough time to get their shots, and they’re resisting her.
Geminid
@Capri: Tester and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown are valuable examples of Democratic Senators who win in red states. Tester has won three narrow victories. Brown won reelection by 300,000 votes in 2018. Both seem to know how to swim against the tide.
Some people speculate about structural changes, modifying Senate representation or abolishing the Senate outright. I guess these reforms conceivably might happen some day. In the meantime, we have to run the machine as we find, as Lincoln put it. The task is to flip red Senate seats, and I think Tester’s and Brown’s success in red states can be instructive in this regard. We can probably learn from purple state Senators like Tammy Baldwin and Bob Casey as well.
debbie
@Another Scott:
It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out otherwise. This is the country we’re in now. ?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You definitely should.
Wvng
@Nicole: I’m A West Virginian who should be out cutting wood for winter, but I don’t want to risk serious injury, because hospitals are full. This is insanity.
HinTN
Tester has the advantage of a legitimate occupation that is in synch with his constituents. Manchin and Sinema, not so much.
@Ten Bears:
When I was back there in engineering school, one question on the final for Fluid Mechanics required us to calculate the wind speed required to tip over a loaded semi truck. I don’t think the wind derailed that train. ?
HinTN
@germy: She’s passing that test!
HinTN
@Baud: The town of Hot Springs used to be a real resort town but now (ok, in the naughts) it’s a sleepy little place that maintains a municipal pool and mud wallows fed by the hot springs. Definitely worth a visit, if only for the scenery.
Jerzy Russian
@MomSense:
In the same way that all nuns in various orders automatically get the name “Mary” tacked on at the beginning, I think all these various idiotic politicians and pundits should automatically get “fucking” as their middle name. In this way we can distinguish between them and those poor souls who happen to have the same or similar names.
HinTN
@HinTN:
Apologies to Jim Morrison.
Jackie
This train wreck hits home; when my daughter lived in IL, she and her boys took this route twice yearly to come home for visits. The train stopped in Pasco, WA before heading on to Seattle. The boys absolutely loved riding the train!
Jerzy Russian
@Baud: The family and I have talked about going to Glacier National Park to see the glaciers before they all melt, but that is not in the cards for another few years at best.
Geminid
@HinTN: I understand that John Tester grows a lot of lentils, and has a keen eye for the pulse of his state.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@HinTN: “You cannot petition the Lord with
prayermanufacturing specifications!Nicole
@Baud: When things are safer, I hope you get to go. I drove across it many years ago as part of a theater tour I was on. We went all over the country, and saw a lot of places (a lot a lot) but the scenery in Montana still sticks out in my mind. It was absolutely gorgeous; I was agog. You can see for miles and miles when you’re driving. Which is good, as no speed limits.
guachi
Montana has had at least one Democratic Senator for the entirety of its existence as a state and I believe Tester will be the last for a long while.
Montana just isn’t the state I grew up in. It was Obama’s closest loss and then the state lost its mind.
Nicole
@Wvng:
You’re absolutely right; it’s nuts. And I don’t blame you; I wouldn’t be taking the risk, either.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good point. I was (foolishly) going by what the Traitors in Congress say they want the infrastructure bill to cover (and nothing beyond that, of course). But, as always, just because they spout their bullshit, doesn’t mean they will actually do anything helpful.
Thanks for the correction.
Another Scott
From this corrected overhead photo it looks like it happened just after a switch. And there seems to be a low spot in the road adjacent to the tracks (but that doesn’t mean that there was a low spot in the track bed, of course). That was posted as a comment in this NTSB thread.
(via a Google search on “NTSB Montana train”)
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@Ten Bears: Is that track bed owned by one of the freight RRs? Here in MN, the primary challenge to getting better Amtrak service — the goal is 2X service daily with Chicago — is negotiating schedules and capacity from the freight lines.
There go two miscreants
@Geminid: Too subtle!
RaflW
@MomSense: Does MTP know she’s married to screeching weasel of the griftpocalypse Ben Domenech?
I say we start calling her Meghan Domenech, since conservatives of course expect their wives to submit and be unified with their husband-man.
At the very least she should be Megan McCain Domenench, talking a page from noted feminist Ronna Romney McDaniel.
trollhattan
@Ten Bears:
That, and trains that carry people are suspect and some kind of commie plot to steal tax dollars.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
Definitely an issue in California. Amtrak operates on the freight lines–Union Pacific and I think Burlington Northern in our area, probably others–and the freights always take priority. Makes it very challenging to maintain a passenger schedule.
RaflW
@Jerzy Russian: It’s a little dystopian, but I suggest going as close to the beginning of the season as possible (once the dred corvid is not a daily threat to breathing).
We went at the very end of June. Now, this can be a bit risky since there’s a small chance the Going-to-the-Sun Road could be closed.
But we enjoyed seeing the straggling snowfields in addition to the actual glaciers. We could pretend (even as we knew were were and it made us a tad sad) that said high snowfields were glaciers.
But even the parts of the park not in view of glaciers is all really, really amazing. And I live part time in the CO Rockies – so my gorgeous meter is already biased.
brantl
@HinTN: Could erode the tracks/bed/understructure, though.
Geminid
@There go two miscreants: Maybe just subtle enough! I like old words. Pulse is one, churl is another.
trollhattan
@Baud: Left half of Montana is very pretty. Right half…depends on one’s affinity for horizon-to-horizon desolation. My guess is in spring, whenever spring hits eastern Montana–probably three or four really swell days in late May–and things are green it too can be pretty. I’ve never timed it right (make that the parents never timed it right, Mongo just pawn in back of Buick).
L85NJGT
@cmorenc:
Unlikely. The line through Alberton hugs a river valley and is subject to washouts, slides and the like. This accident occurred in flatlandia. By the on-board accounts the rear cars seemed to have dropped off the rails prior to bashing into a switch complex at 78 mph.
Railroad accident statistics tell us human error is most likely, followed by rail issues. This time of year, when the temps fluctuate between daytime mid 80s and overnight 40s, thermal stress on the rail can result in kinks and pull aparts.
OzarkHillbilly
@trollhattan: That’s true everywhere Amtrak runs.
trollhattan
Meanwhile, a few states to the south. Who could have guessed?
Clearly, the only solution to this kerfuffle is for Texas to take over Oklahoma and enforce their own Talibanish set of laws. That’ll take care of all those long car trips. Speaking of the Taliban, it seems they should contract with Iceland to run their gummint. Governin’s hard, ain’t it boys? And let’s be honest, you’d rather be running around shooting people instead of directing city traffic and holding public hangings. Although you probably really like the second thing.
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly:
The good news is the railroads have all learned from their previous mistakes and everything is hunky-dory now. Frealz.
We were informed after the ’91 wreck that they would re-curve the rail bend and change their operating practices and this would never, ever, hardly happen again. Pinkie-swear.
Michael Cain
Odd factoid: Montana has had at least one Democratic Senator in office continuously since 1911. That’s the longest such streak in the country.
Feathers
Also, hospitals (and small medical practices) are weird places. A major problem is strict seniority scheduling, often based on very small areas, like a ward or a floor. This leads to miserably unhappy people who won’t leave the job they hate, because even though they could easily get hired somewhere else, it would mean starting over again, with several years of shitty shifts and zero scheduling flexibility. This can lead to a really dysfunctional workplace, with petty grievances looming large. Job still gets done, but the emotional cost is high and group loyalty over rewarded.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
Now THIS is a first class Blazing Saddles reference.
Anoniminous
@HinTN:
By definition a 318 mph F5 tornado would do the trick.
Booger
@Baud: You and that dude from ‘Red October!’
Villago Delenda Est
The COVIDiots have fucked up our health care system something fierce. The lock down back in the winter of 2020 was in part to prevent the ERs from being overwhelmed with cases, but in certain very stupidly governed (or actively non-governed) states, this is precisely what is happening due to relaxation of mask and public assembly guidelines, coupled with the utter insanity of anti-vaxx bullshit. As I’ve stated before, the rule for admission into the ER if you’ve got COVID symptoms should be no jab, no go. Die out on the street. You’ve made your choice, now live with it for a short time, morons.
Booger
@Geminid: I see what you did there.
debbie
@Another Scott:
Are you at all surprised by the distance of the train from the switch? Wouldn’t it seem that there would have been a more immediate impact if the switch caused the derailment?
Another Scott
@Feathers: Thanks for the peek inside.
A neighbor down the street was a fairly senior nurse in the local hospital. She retired a few years ago because she couldn’t take the BS any more.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@debbie: The train presumably was moving at some speed, though sometimes they do slow down quite a bit for switches, so the momentum would have wanted to keep the cars moving forward. So, one wouldn’t expect the cars to fall over right at the switch (even if the switch caused it).
I’m more surprised that the front half of the train seemed to make it through fine and the back half didn’t, but that may again be normal if one considers the front half is the heaviest (the two locomotives), etc.
I’m no expert. We’ll have to see what they say.
Cheers,
Scott.
L85NJGT
@Villago Delenda Est:
The same states have had the most hospital shutdowns from refusing Medicaid expansion money.
Let freedumb ring.
Baud
@Another Scott:
You’re on the internet, aren’t you?
Anoniminous
I see Rand Paul has a new book out.
OzarkHillbilly
@trollhattan: Yeah, we’ve got a bad bend in the tracks just outside of Bourbon, MO. There was a derailment there a few years back that almost had to be operator error. Fortunately, afaik no chemical spills. Half the cars ended up sliding down a 30′ embankment. It took weeks to clean up that mess. It’s the main line thru the area and I suppose straightening it out is just too much of a legal can of worms to open up.
It will happen again.
Betty
@RaflW: It would have to be Meghan McCain Domenech cause no way she is giving up her “heritage”.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
Makes me wonder if public trust of nursing as a profession will suffer between this and the nuts who think doctors and nurses are apart of some big conspiracy. It’s routinely been ranked as one of the most trusted professions in the US for years
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … BlueVirginia – Virginia keeps getting bluer and more divers, but you’d never know it from these godawful new maps by the Virginia redistricting commission’s partisan map drawers.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
Most of us are old enough to remember when Ohio was a purple, swing state. Isn’t that why its diners became the NYT reporters favorite places to go to find Real Americans®?
trollhattan
Labour developing spine?
My recommendation to Ms Rayner is to tell Sir Starmer plus any and all Tories to “Sod off” and keep being salty. This is how you conduct a gunfight, especially with BoJo speculating he’ll have ten years in office.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
That’s gold, Jerry, gold!
Baud
@Betty:
Is Meghan McCain is related to someone famous?
trollhattan
Wasilla, Wasilla, now where have I heard of that place before?
You stay classy, Wasilla.
James E Powell
@Baud:
Gonna be a dental floss tycoon?
trollhattan
@Baud:
Did you know Meghan McCain was a prisoner of communist Lie-beral ladies?
Geminid
@trollhattan: Labour stated out with Keir Hardie as their leader. Now they are lead by Keir Hardly.
opiejeanne
@Baud: In July 1988, we rode the Empire Builder from Seattle to Glacier National Park, where we picked up a rental car at the station and drove the “Going to the Sun” road. People were stopped at the side of the road to look at mountain goats that looked like tiny specks far across the valley, while marmots sat under their cars, looking longingly at the coolant systems. What looked like a glacier hung over the road on the other side, melting onto the roadway. The mountain scenery was amazing, just unbelievable. We spent a week there, just gawking like tourists. Which we were.
There are many easy hikes from the lodge we stayed at for a week, I mean the paths hardly climbed at all. We saw lady slipper orchids growing just off of one path, and we made sure to talk and sing with our kids so that we didn’t startle a bear. We took the boat ride on Lake St Mary, to gawk at some bald eagles on the Canadian side of the park, and had lunch in Canada. There are tougher hikes, but our girls were little and we thought they’d leave us in the dust. One hike to a portal that had just opened had a sheet of rotting ice across the path, and while we watched people cross it like no big deal, below it was a steep drop made of scree. I could imagine that ice breaking off and sliding down 100+ feet, so we didn’t go any farther. I think the girls were mad at me, but the 5 year old was always mad so it was nothing new.
On our last day we drove out of the park and had a look at a little of the state and at dusk, on the way back, an elk jumped over the hood of our rental car. That was an astonishing moment. Scared the bejesus out of us.
opiejeanne
@LiminalOwl: Our eastbound train was delayed for several hours starting during a meal time, due to track issues. We ate in the dining car that time and admired the view while repairs were done; I’m not sure if we were in Montana or Idaho, just that we weren’t in Washington any more.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I’m saddened by Labour. They just can seem to find a way forward.
Baud
@opiejeanne: sounds amazing
opiejeanne
@Nicole: I’m pretty sure Montana reinstated the speed limits because people are fucking idiots.
RaflW
As an aviation geek, I well remember when three brand new, ready for final assembly 737s tumbled into a river in Montana due to a derailment.
(Don’t watch the whole clip. Biz babble to the point of stupidity … and beyond!)
Ksmiami
@Villago Delenda Est: I can always count on you not to mince words…
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: When I was 9, so 1967, my parents and I camped our way across Canada to the Okanogan Valley ( which my father hated, there were people there) and came back into the states somewhere in Washington state, then back thru Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. One of the highlights was following a bit of the Lewis and Clarke Trail. I remember camping at Three Forks, Montana where some grizzled camper told us stories of Jim Bridger.
When I read Stephan Ambrose “Undaunted Courage” I wished my mother were still alive, she was so fascinated with the story.
There’s my Montana plug ?
Baud
@opiejeanne:
As with antivaxxers, it only takes a few to spoil the fun for everyone.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Lots of good Montana stories in this thread.
Jay
@trollhattan:
really? “Problematic”?????
When pols actually call it what it is, eg:”scum”, it’s popular, even amongst their haterz.
we, almost,(27%) everybody are tired of people pissing on our leg and telling us, “no, it’s raining”.
jnfr
And this is why I never want to leave my house again. The world is stupid.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Well, Tories are scum. This is fact. It’s science. BoJo is a fuckhead.
Baud
MagdaInBlack
@jnfr: Been my philosophy for years. ?
Suzanne
I am really freaked out by the idea of going to any of the heavily anti-vax states. My in-laws just sold their farm in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and bought a new one about an hour further outside the city. They haven’t been able to see their grandkids in a year and a half, and I feel terrible about that. They have been taking Covid precautions incredibly seriously, and my FIL got some bad health news and I know they want us to visit. But I won’t get my younger two kids on a plane yet, because they’re not vaccinated, and I don’t want to drive out there, because the idea of sharing space in hotels, public restrooms, restaurants, etc with that many unvaccinated people freaks me out. Lord.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We’re going to a memorial service this afternoon, and I’m wondering people will be masked.
Kay
@Baud:
John McCain has no legislative legacy, not due to Democrats but due to Republicans. He failed at immigration reform and climate change legislation. McCain-Feingold might have been his legacy but the far Right Republican judges he confirmed threw it in the trash. His only real lasting act was not overturning Obamacare.
I think he knew it, hence his bitterness. I know media adored him but he wasn’t at all effective or a leader in the job he chose. He didn’t advance any cause or change anything. He didn’t even stop the GOP from lurching so far Right. He went along with all of it.
wonkie
I took the Empire Builder to Chicago and back a couple of years ago. The name makes me wince. I think it was named by Jim Hill or maybe named to honor his empire-building. He blasted the railroad across the Great Plains just as the tribes along the route were being confined to reservations under the supervision of the army. As we chugged past Wold Point on reservation land, a small group of young Native men, clearly drinking, gave us an ironic cheer.
The view out the window for hours is an amazing tapestry of grasses woven together by the variations in the surface of the land. Literally inches make a difference. The slightly higer ground had the shorter, lighter colored grasses and the lower areas had the greener, lusher grasses. The variations in texture and color were endless, every green from lime to emerald, every yellow from gold to puce to ochre to lemon and even a pale yellow that was almost silvery, And of course the grasses were short, tall,straight, curly, thin, lush—an amazing display of the creativity of nature.
I am sorry that people died. I thought about derailment as we lurched along I didn’t think we were going fast enough for a derailment to be really dangerous.
eddie blake
@trollhattan: eleven million. there were six million red-sea-pedestrians in the count, but eleven million in total were liquidated by the nazis.
gays, communists, anarchists, socialists, the disabled and anyone else who fell out of favor with the regime. basic historical knowledge. these fucking people need to read more fucking books.
the words that spill out of their face-holes have the just the most tenuous connection to reality.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: A little further down in the article it mentions the Pirate Party in Iceland, and that its candidate was elected to Parliament.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
After calling Tory leadership “scum” — which in my opinion is unfair to hard-working pond scum all over the world…
I see one problem here already. How does a “Sir” anyone become a Labour leader? Shouldn’t Labour leadership be unwilling to be seen in public standing beside “Sir” anyone?
Plus shouldn’t a Labour leader be more concerned about the slur upon honest hard-working pond scum? Perhaps noted commenter Tony Jay can fill us colonials in on how a knighted individual become leader of the Labour party?
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
If anyone isn’t masked, you should leave immediately after informing everyone why you are leaving:
“There are people here who don’t care at all about protecting the living by wearing a mask, so I’m sure they don’t actually give a drip about the deceased person we are here to remember. Good by, and good luck!”
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Amen to all of this. McCain’s “maverick” image was a paper-tiger façade hyped by the media.
By the way, did you know that he has a somewhat famous daughter?
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
Yup. Seems to me as a positive first step, Labour should make Ms. Rayner their leader. Stop pussyfooting around with scum! Perhaps several buses can be emblazoned with that slogan and driven around the UK. Worked for Brexit.
Steeplejack
Just have to say that the weather here in NoVA is fantastic today: 72°, sunny, slight breeze, humidity 37% (always a critical factor in the swampy D.C. environs). I have opened the windows to let in the fresh air. I may actually don the tactical gear (pants!) and venture outside later.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
McCain as a politician was a rerun of McCain as a pilot. So many broken planes.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Same holds true here in the Greater Sac Metroplex–predicted 82, breezy, AQI of 17. Fall more or less arrived in agreement with the calendar, and the best thing is the lack of smoke.
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
I think the “sir” is an honorific attached to an award he received after becoming a Labour big shot—OBE, MBE, whatever.
Ah, Wikipedia:
Baud
@Steeplejack:
@trollhattan:
Fall is my favorite season. Spring is nice too, but in fall the weeds are dying instead of sprouting.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack:
Let’s be careful out there.
Kayla Rudbek
@Steeplejack: agreed. We’re out on the tandem again and we stopped for brunch. Not sure how far we will ride today. Mr. Rudbek is currently vetoing a stop at the yarn store.
Tom Fitz
@Baud: if/when you go, you must have breakfast at the Nova Cafe in Bozeman, if it is still there.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I think fall is my favorite season, too, especially after the pestilential summers here in the DMV. Brisk and bracing, but with a slightly elegaic undertone that suits my personality.
The Pale Scot
@J R in WV:
There’s a difference between Sir and Lord.
A Knighthood is usually granted in recognition of personal achievements or good deeds now and days, (ex P.Mcartney, E. John) instead of a dong for services to the
EmpireKingdom.Lordship is for those who are recognized as Upper Class Twit nominees
Mart
@trollhattan: Talked about visiting Montana this summer and a friend their said don’t bother, the constant smoke is too depressing and hard to deal with.
mvr
Have a real fondness for Montana. My first hitch-hiking trip of any distance and my first backpacking trip was to Glacier after high school in the late 70s. Had told friends all of whom were doing cool stuff for the summer, that I also was doing cool stuff. I was “going backpacking in the west”. Total novice at backpacking with new boots (graduation present) and a grasp that only barely stayed in sight of my reach. First day of hiking was 9 miles to a backcountry campsite a few thousand feet higher than where the trail left the road. I still have a visual memory of my feet on the trail. And also of the recently destroyed Chalet I hiked past on the way to my destination.The place was totally beautiful.
Going to the Sun road is magnificent even if you don’t get into the backcountry. I went back to Glacier again car camping on my way out to grad school in the 80s. Spent a day driving that road (there are few others in the park) and taking photos.
Also spent a good bit of time on highway 94 (iirc on one trip it was not all completed as a 4 lane yet) getting across all 800 miles of the state a couple of times in addition to that trip. So I remember the contrast between the relatively flat eastern half and the mountainous western part.
Hoping for a restoration of sanity and safety.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I think a position on weeds should be part of your platform.
WaterGirl
@Kayla Rudbek: Who is riding in front? I think it’s like music in the car, the driver gets to pick.
If you’re in front on the tandem bike, I think you get to go to the yarn store.
edit: Do both of you control the brakes on a tandem bicycle? It’s been so long, I can’t recall.
mvr
@mvr:
I still don’t know why I don’t ever see my messages to edit in visual mode and why when I use the text editor my html cannot generate paragraphs that look right or at least are formatted uniformly throughout the message.
WaterGirl
@mvr: Do you use Firefox?
prostratedragon
@mvr: In text editor skip an extra line to get separated paragraphs.
WaterGirl
@mvr:
Have you tried clicking on “click here to refresh”? (see image below)
Clicking on that should bring back the visual tab. But don’t click it once you have started writing your comment, and the refresh will wipe out what you have already written.
WaterGirl
@mvr: I added the extra line between your paragraphs, as mentioned by @prostratedragon.
Steeplejack
@Kayla Rudbek:
That seems uncharitable, especially these days, when you can park yourself somewhere and people-watch or read stuff on your phone. Maybe he’s hot to get home for
the footballa nap or something?I drew the line at “shopping together,” which usually meant “I will still make the decisions I was going to make anyway, but we will pretend that you were involved somehow.” Not a hill to die on, unless the object in question was something important to me.
Also, could be a factor if “a stop” too often means a two-hour marathon. LOL, so many things to consider.
prostratedragon
I’ve been thinking over a trip on Amtrak from Chicago west over the next year or two; this covid business is making it seem more like two. Hope there will still be glaciers then.
Steeplejack
@mvr:
Your paragraphs in #111 look fine to me (Firefox, Win10).
ETA: And now I see why.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I’ve taken the train between north and south CA not too long ago and it was not always the freight trains that had the advantage. But it sure wasn’t never either. Amtrak service in CA is almost pathetic. From LA you ride the bus to Bakersfield where you board the train. Then you ride to Martinez, where you get back on a bus. I’ve done the trip more than once and twice one of the 3 buses LA to Bakersfield broke down. Once the one I was on and once another one we stopped to pick up passengers from. The 3 buses pick up from different stops across LA county. The total ride to where I go is over 11 hrs. You can drive it in 6-7.
Ruckus
@Baud:
She was…..
dimmsdale
@trollhattan: Horizon to horizon desolation is right. Except for the Custer battlefield, there’s not much you’d want to do in Eastern Montana. My mom was born in Westmore (no longer exists) and lived in Ismay to age 12. We went back to visit in the 80s and boy, I sure take my hat off to current residents who’re trying to keep the town going. Quite a few ruins from homesteader days (ruins of a bank, ruins of the school, ruins of two of the three churches the town used to have, holes in the ground where houses were dug up and moved to Miles City) but if you don’t have sentimental attachment or familial interest, I’d be inclined to give the area a respectful and perhaps sorrowful miss.
opiejeanne
@Baud: That was an amazing trip. Started at the train station in San Bernardino, CA to Union Station in Los Angeles, up the west coast with a short stop in Ventura to run and get a couple of cheap blankets. The stop was right across from a Sears. Up toOakland to change trains, to Seattle. The cuts had wildflowers blooming like mad in them, mostly foxglove. Two days, total. A week in Seattle with a friend, then the trip to Glacier.
Coming back we went through Portland for a train change, spent the 4th of July in SF, watched the fireworks from one of the tallest hotels, and for $10 extra we stopped in Santa Barbara for 3 days at the beach.
Hmm. That trip started in late June, so we were in Glacier right at the end of June and early July.
I’d like to do just the Seattle to Glacier part of the trip again, and this time pop for the sleeper. We slept in our seats, which was not optimal.
Tony Gerace
@GSV Sleeper Service: Apparently the latest propaganda from Tucker Carlson is that hospitals are overwhelmed because of filthy, brown skinned Mexicans. A lot of people believe him
oatler
@J R in WV: 
“Everyone in Britain, it seemed, was Labour, except for the government.”
-Martin Amis (from some 1990s novel)
RaflW
@Suzanne: Road trips with kids under 12 would be really rough. We, as two adults, had car travel dialed in pretty well last year. I’d cook two full days of food that’s tasty cold (pasta and potato salads, seasoned roasted bone-in chicken thighs, hard boiled eggs and such), and had our check-in/check-outs set for one trip up and in/locked then one out/drive away. If it didn’t fit in or on the rolling suitcase (including the cooler), it stayed in the trunk overnight.
But kids? Unpossible. So sorry for the many here who have unvax’d kiddos. Blergh.
LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
@opiejeanne: I envy you. Our detour was mostly after dark.
Kayla Rudbek
@WaterGirl: modern tandems are designed so that the taller rider is always in front and has the steering and the brakes (except for recumbent or half-recumbent tandems but those are rare indeed). The front rider is referred to as the captain and the rear rider is referred to as the stoker (late 19th-early 20th century naval terms). The idea is that the stoker is pouring on the power as necessary. And “when the stoker ain’t happy, nobody’s happy!”
The tandem bikes of the late 19th-early 20th century did come in models where the riders were side-by-side or where the woman was riding in front, so that she wouldn’t have to look at a sweaty male back. However, some of those were set up so that the man was steering from the rear seat. Not very practical in my opinion.
Kayla Rudbek
@Steeplejack: the length of the stop and the amount of yarn that I already have at home were definite reasons to veto the stop. I can probably stop by later on this week and still see whatever is left over from the trunk sale.
Dan B
@trollhattan: A good friend grew up in Alaska and described Wasilla as a place full of strip malls and drugs. Seems their Rep is repping them well.
Dan B
@opiejeanne: I agree about Glacier National Park. We did the little hike at the pass on Going to the Sun Highway and had Mountain Goats plus kids next to the path. Plus the prarie on the east of the park was filled with subalpine flowers. I’ve hiked hundreds of miles in the Cascades and Glacier is amazing, although there are ten times more glaciers in the North Cascades than in Glacier N.P. That is being lost as well.
Dan B
@Baud: There are some quirky small towns and old resorts to the southwest of Flathead Lake. These are refuge for the current and reformed hippies. Plus hot springs in quantity.
LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
@Steeplejack: Ah, a KCB. Like Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, who
”always voted at my party’s call/and never thought of thinking for myself at all”
mvr
@WaterGirl: Yes I use firefox. I take it that that question is bad news for me.
mvr
@prostratedragon:
Thanks!
mvr
@WaterGirl:
Just did it (click to refresh). Still looks the same and doesn’t work.
mvr
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for the edit.
I see both tabs for both boxes but can’t ever type in the visual box.
Probably not the best time to troubleshoot this as I’m burning dinner. (Was cooking, but . . . )
mvr
@opiejeanne:
This trip sounds fabulous!
RaflW
@Tony Gerace: At this point. Fox & the GOP are rooting for an open race war.